Don't lose sight of the forest for the trees: recognising the benefits as well as the limitations of implementation research

We write to thank Hannon et al.for their interest(1)in our recent paper that reported pre-post programme changes in anthropometric outcomes for the upscaled community programme Parenting, Eating and Activity for Child Health (PEACH) QLD. Their letter identified several weaknesses in the study design including a lack of control group and the possibility of a regression to the mean (RTM) effect arising due to selection bias. Whilst we acknowledge there are indeed limitations to this and other implementation research study designs, we nevertheless feel that our findings are important and here provide further details of our data to strengthen the basis of our conclusions.